Adelaide Fenwick and the School in the Hills
by meldahlie
Summary: Were Harry and Neville the only 'Children of the Order? Starts with Sirius Black and a proposal of marriage...!
1. Chapter 1

_**1976.**_

There were strange grown-ups in the sitting room. Three of them. Two men talking to Daddy: "This is Sirius Black. No, no – he's on our side; he's living with the Potters, now. Sirius, this is Benjie Fenwick."

"An' who are you?"

All the grown-ups jumped. Nobody had noticed the little girl lugging the large cat, whose legs and tail trailed practically to the floor, in the doorway.

Sometimes grown-ups don't answer the simplest questions. The little girl frowned. "An' who are you?"

There was a titter of grown-up laughter at the five-year-old's insistent, clear-voiced query. On the other side of the room, Mother paused her conversation with the lady who'd come. "Adelaide..." she began warningly.

But the man crouched down. "I'm... I'm Uncle Frank," he said decisively.

"Oh." Adelaide put the cat down to consider the matter: Mother, and Daddy, and a Sirius Black, and an Uncle Frank. The lady with Mother had visited before, and she'd been called Alice then, but with this...

Adelaide ignored Daddy's chuckle at Uncle Frank's explanation, and peered across the room. "Does that make you Aunt Alice?"

There was a roar of laughter: Mother and Daddy and the Sirius Black; Uncle Frank and the lady called Alice both turned rather pink before they joined in. Uncle Frank stood up again, but he looked at Adelaide, not Alice. "Perhaps, little girl, perhaps."

The Sirius Black let out a last bark of laughter. He bent down, and Adelaide scrutinized him. He was only a big boy, really, not a grown-up. His hair flopped round his chin, not like Daddy's, and he looked like a happy dog.

"You're cute," he said. "Will _you_ marry _me_, then?"

_That_ was an entirely different matter to aunts and uncles.

Adelaide gathered up the middle of her cat with red-faced dignity, and stepped back to the doorway as all the grown-ups laughed. "I'n too busy now, thank 'ou."

_A/N: There is more to this tale – as you may gather from the discrepancy between the title and the contents! It is just still very much "in progress" - but this first chapter seemed too much fun not to share!_


	2. Chapter 2

**1982**

"Aunt Emmeline!"

Regardless of trolley and luggage and all other passengers, Adelaide Fenwick dived through the crowd at the head of platforms nine and ten, Kings Cross station, to hug a tall, grey-haired woman in a frumpy skirt and mac. "Hello! Hello! Hello!" She executed a caper of mad delight, that drew smiles from one or two of the nearby muggles. Surely nothing could be more exciting than this very first time for Going To Hogwarts...

Aunt Emmeline put out a firm hand to brush Adelaide's flying brown locks into order again. "Hello, Adelaide – hush, dear! What have you done with your mother?"

"She's coming, she's coming!" Adelaide ground to a halt with a final skip, and hastily felt the reassuring weight in her pocket. "She said we weren't going on the platform without company," she added, remembering that – as Mother had said several times this morning – old enough to go to Hogwarts was old enough to behave sensibly. Adelaide looked up and smiled. "I'm glad you've come. Now Mother won't have to go home by herself." Aunt Emmeline was one of the nicest aunts and uncles from the Order – the surviving ones – but why did she look so sad sometimes – at one's simplest comments? It didn't matter, for there was a trolley coming through the crowd, with a basket with somebody Aunt Emmiline just _had_ to meet... Adelaide seized her hand: "Here's Mother! Look, Mother – the Order's sent Aunt Emmeline to help us!"

Mother made an attempt on her hair, too. "If you could show us the way, Mrs Vance, before Adelaide explodes..."

She wasn't _that_ bad... Adelaide clasped her hands behind her back, and stood as still as she could. She was eleven. And she was going to Hogwarts so she could learn to do magic for Mother like Daddy had used to, instead of Mother always having to do things the muggle way. And that was pretty grown up. You had to be entitled to be a _little_ excited. She took hold of the trolley handle to show she could steer her own luggage onto the platform.

Nothing ever _excited_ Aunt Emmeline. A barrier that turned into a gateway, a scarlet steam engine, a train full of hundreds of other boys and girls going to Hogwarts, owls and cats and the positive crackle of magic in the air – Mother at least looked a little startled, but Aunt Emmeline just calmly carried on. She found a compartment, she put a braking charm on the trolley, and she even levitated Adelaide's shiny new trunk on board before she would be introduced to the occupant of the wicker cat basket. "Look, Aunt Emmeline! I'm taking Agamemnon with me!" The large tabby cat hadn't shrunk in six years, but he didn't trail to the floor any more as Adelaide hauled him out. In fact, Platform Nine and three quarters seemed to please him enough to purr.

Aunt Emmeline gave one of her dry chuckles. "I expect he will be glad to see Hogwarts again. He spent most of Benjy's time there on the Gryffindor hearth rug. The flat patch is probably still there."

And Benjy was Daddy, and that was the best thing today of all...

"Look – Mother gave me Daddy's picture!" Adelaide tugged hastily at her blazer pocket to withdraw a much too large book, that she flipped open. Benjy Fenwick's photograph waved up at his smiling daughter.

"It was all she wanted," Mother murmured, as if Adelaide was deaf.

"Mother thinks it's not sensible," said Adelaide, looking up quickly. Really – grown ups. It was perfectly sensible – and simple. "Other people have their Daddies to see them off, and they can write home to them. I'm just taking mine with me." How did that differ from having Daddy's cat? Why did one make Aunt Emmeline chuckle, and the other strike her silent? "It is sensible, isn't it, Aunt Emmeline?"

Of course, grown ups never answer simple, sensible questions. They pause for a minute, then swallow hard, and ask: "Have you got it in a safe place?"

Wasn't that obvious too? Adelaide clapped the book shut. "Transfiguration. It's my favourite – it sounds wonderful – and it does..." she tucked one corner of the book into the impossibly small pocket "fit- if- I- push- it..." 

"If you're going to like Transfiguration, remember what you have to call Minerva."

"Professor McGonagall." Adelaide repeated automatically. Mother had gone on a lot about it in the past few days... "I hope I'm in her House," she added. "Daddy and Uncle Frank were Gryffindors, weren't they?" Adelaide patted the book in her pocket yet again, but the other Gryffindor was the one thing that was- wrong - in this exciting day. She looked up with a slight frown. "Uncle Frank said they'd come and see me off – after Daddy died. D'you think they'll be better enough to come next year?"

Another of Aunt Emmeline's silences. And then slightly shaky hand that made a final attempt on Adelaide's hair. "Let's hope so, dear..."

The train whistle blew. One hug for Aunt Emmeline – one hug for Mother - "I'll be home _soon_ to do magic for both of us" - and Adelaide remembered to go very uprightly up the train steps in that dignified way Aunt Emmeline did. Eleven was _nearly _grown up...

Another first year boy scrambled on after her. He had a mother _and _a daddy, _and _a bigger sister in a Hufflepuff scarf _and _a little sister - that seemed a lot for one person... Adelaide stared round the rest of the platform with a slight frown – but there were a reassuring number of other children being seen off by only one parent, or by grey-haired grandparents, or aunts or uncles. Adelaide patted her pocket happily again. She wasn't so badly off, even without Uncle Frank this year – Mother, and Daddy to go with her, and Aunt Emmeline to see her off, and Aunt Minerva at the other end – all much more fun than a big sister called Janet who was busy telling Liam he couldn't lean out of the window.

Adelaide pulled the window strap up and leaned recklessly out to wave until the train rounded the bend.

"Fenwick, Adelaide!"

The owner of the name stepped out of the line towards the Sorting Hat. Fenwick. That was the nicest thing about the Boy Who Lived. Quite apart from no more You-Know-Who, as all the aunts and uncles from the Order had called him, and people not being afraid, the very nicest thing was being Fenwick again. Because, for two awful years, from when Daddy had died to when Uncle Frank had come to tell them about James and Lily and Harry Potter after last Halloween, Mother had taken Adelaide back to live in her muggle world. And given their name as Chester. Elizabeth and Adelaide Chester. Adelaide had hated it. All the teachers at that primary school had seemed to have a particular obsession with calling her Miss Chester when asking her _why_ another funny accident had occurred, when she couldn't explain it was just because she was Benjy Fenwick's daughter and thus magic and a witch. Like the time she'd accidentally banished the playground bully over the school fence. Right into somebody's back garden. They'd had to walk round to the next road and ring the doorbell to get him back. He'd said Adelaide Chester had pushed him – which wasn't true on several points...

"Well, thank you for telling me that."

Adelaide jumped. She hadn't registered that she had reached the stool and sat down and Aunt Minerva, looking terribly stern and solemn and Professor McGonagall-ish, had clapped the Sorting Hat on her head. "I'm sorry," she whispered hastily. How did you address a Hat that spoke to you? "Er- O Hat," because that was almost like 'O Cat', and that was what Daddy had used to call Agamemnon, and you had to be polite to cats.

"I haven't," the Hat continued as if she hadn't spoken, "seen such a clear fit for your House for years...What you want-"

"Is to do magic for Mother," Adelaide put in hastily. "'Cause she's a muggle and can't. Please?"

"Exactly..."

Perhaps 'O Hat' hadn't been such a bad address – its tone sounded just like Agamemnon when he used to purr with pleasure lying on Daddy's shoulder-

"I can see your mind wandering again, you know..."

Adelaide flushed – she didn't _mean_ to keep forgetting Mother's instructions to mind her manners but-

"Well, you'll never be perfect, but you'll be perfectly happy in: GRYFFINDOR!"

Gryffindor? Gryffindor? Like Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice and Aunt Emmeline and Uncles-Fabian-and-Gideon-now-dead and James and Lily and Remus and Peter-though-she'd-never-liked-him? And-

She must have stood up. She must have taken off the Hat, and walked across the Hall. To what was – really was- now-

Adelaide sank contentedly down onto the nearest Gryffindor bench. Aun- Professor McGonagall was still too busy reading out names to answer her smile. But- it didn't matter. Adelaide patted her pocket happily.

"_Our_ House now, Daddy, Our House..."

_A/N: Thanks to: JKR for inventing this world and letting us play in it; and to Elsha-of-The-Sugar-Quill for inventing Janet and Liam O'Neill, and unknowingly letting me play with them. If anyone reading this knows her, please thank her. _


	3. Chapter 3

**1983**

"... and your mouse should be successfully converted into a snuff box. Any questions?"

A girl's hand at the front of the room rose quickly. "Aunt Minerva –"

The combined Gryffindor/Ravenclaw first year Transfiguration class exploded into laughter.

"I – I mean, please, Professor McGonagall –" Adelaide Fenwick's hand faltered with her voice, as McGonagall swept the class with an utterly quenching stare, that came to halt on the unfortunate Gryffindor in the front desk.

"Miss Fenwick, that is the _two-hundredth_ occasion of the use of an inappropriate address, and we are _only_ in January." A few Ravenclaws at the back sniggered, and came in for part of the blast of withering disapproval. "I think we will make that an occasion for detention."

Adelaide swallowed hard. "Yes, A- ar- er-" – there was an awful silence – "Professor."

~:~:~

… _Professor McGonagall … Professor McGonagall … Professor McGonagall ..._

There was stern silence in the office of the Transfiguration Professor, apart from the scratching of Adelaide Fenwick's quill at the small 'Detention Desk' in the corner.

… _Professor McGonagall …_

She wrote the title again carefully, and then paused with a sigh. Casting a sideways glance at the rigid figure at the main desk, who was reading Transfiguration Today in a very forbidding fashion, Adelaide pushed back the upper end of the parchment roll, and began to count softly under her breath:

"One hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and two, one hundred and three... One hundred and three." Adelaide sighed a tragic eleven-year-old's sigh. "Ninety seven more..."

… _Professor McGonagall …_

She chanced another glance at the owner of the name – to find she had vanished. Gone. Nobody else in the room, apart from an equally forbidding looking cat that had sprung up on the desk. Adelaide looked back down at the parchment under the cat's stare.

… _Professor McGonagall …_

It would be very wrong to get up and look at all those tantalisingly interesting Transfiguration books on the bookshelves. But if there was only Professor McGonagall's cat here, then it would be quite safe to get out a little reassuring company. Adelaide slipped her hand gently into the school bag on the floor beside her chair, felt the familiar binding of 'Beginner's Transfiguration,' and pulled the photo out from inside it.

"I'm in detention, Daddy," she announced softly but tragically. "She's going to write and tell Mother, too. I haven't had detention before, but I didn't realise it was really two hundred times..."

There was a rather sharp noise from the cat on the desk.

"And now I'm stuck here all by myself with a very cross cat..."

**1985**

The quidditch locker rooms were silent as the Gryffindor chasers trailed out of their post-tryout practice. The new Gryffindor keeper sat on her locker, hugging her knees under her. _If only they'd all hurry up and leave..._

_There – they were gone. _Adelaide uncoiled with cat-like speed, and dug hastily in her book bag. Somewhere in her old Transfiguration book … was … yes – the photo. She opened the locker, and brushed aside the nice new red robes with 'Fenwick' in splendid gold letters across the back. If you had a good catch and could hover, it didn't matter that you weren't a terribly long bean pole for keeper. She was the Keeper. Mother would be pleased, and – Adelaide considered her father's photo with all the dignity of thirteen – much too old to talk to photos.

_Daddy was a Gryffindor – he would have been delighted._

She looked round furtively. "We're going to win the Cup, Daddy. No matter what." There, that covered everything a photo needed to know, and now – She was the keeper, this was her locker, and while everybody else had quidditch heroes cut out of _Which? Broomstick_ and _Quidditch Illustrated_ stuck up in their lockers, hers – was going to have Daddy as well.

Sticking charms aren't tricky. Adelaide surveyed her handiwork, and nodded. "Much safer than carrying you about: that Liam O'Neill from Slytherin wanted to know the other day why I had a first year's book with me – was I that bad at Transfiguration?" She grinned. "I'm top of the class, so I just asked him if he_ wanted_ his housemates to know his big sister held his hand on the train in first year..."

"Oh... and, Daddy," Adelaide's face fell. "That first detention – it wasn't a cat at all – it was Professor McGonagall's animagus..."

**1987**

"We won! We won! We won! We won! We've won the Cup!"

A wild gaggle of red-robed Gryffindor quidditch players tumbled back into their locker room, pummeling at their captain's ginger mop.

Charlie Weasley came up laughing and gasping for air after a particularly vigorous whack from one of the Beaters. "We Won!" he echoed, raising his fist still clutching the Snitch as the rest of the team thronged to grab for it. "We won! Adelaide – try and get it!"

The Gryffindor Keeper dived back into the scrum, and made momentarily successful contact on the Snitch. "We Won!"

"When you have all finished yelling like banshees, the rest of your House is waiting to escort you back to the castle."

The Gryffindor team froze at the brisk, crisp voice, and tumbled hastily round to look at its Head of House.

"There's no need to look so worried. A very good catch, Mr Weasley. Your brother will be proud of you, Miss Lynch, and good play from you too, Miss Fenwick. A very good win."

_She was – no doubt about it – almost smiling. It was a fair risk._ "Thank you–" Adelaide chanced the briefest of cheeky pauses from the back of the group "–Professor."

For one moment, McGonagall's mouth actually quirked – and then there was an explosion of noise. Gryffindor House could wait no longer for its Quidditch Cup Winners, and stormed the locker room to carry them out shoulder high.

Perhaps a long forgotten photograph heard the happy din from the back of a locker.

**~~:~~:~~:~~**

_**A/N: I know, this has been a very, very long time in coming. But there will be more, soon, fear not: Adelaide is a very persistent soul! **_

_**You have to be, to be a Gryffindor quidditch player. Do you know, I have Never, Ever found an account of the Charlie Weasley captained Cup victory, anywhere... Anyone want a stray plot bunny looking for good home...?**_

_**For those who saw this when it was originally listed as 'OC & Sirius B,' that actually referred to just the first chapter, although Sirius will crop up a little, later on.  
**_

_**For the reason for the long delay, please see my profile and 'Pawns'  
**_

_**For the next chapter... give me a week, maybe!  
**_


	4. Chapter 4

**1989**

There was great hilarity in the dormitory of the oldest Gryffindor girls. All the seventh-years were under strict orders from the deputy headmistress to Pack Up Properly.

"We _cannot_," Professor McGonagall had said firmly, "spend the summer owling forgotten odds and ends on to you. As you will not be back next year, anything left behind now will be lost. Forever."

_Hmm. One or two Slytherin Quidditch players who should be left behind, then._

But apart from bad inter-House jokes, it had seemed an onerous task, until Dora Tonks from sixth year had told them of the _'Pack!'_ charm her mother used. Never failing, all-encompassing, even folding your socks neatly – it sounded amazing. The Gryffindor girls had drawn lots – and Adelaide Fenwick had tried it.

The result had been – spectacular: a sudden hurricane of items whizzing as if by summoning charm from all over the castle, a particular torrent streaming through the window from the locker rooms of the quidditch pitch. Four startled girls were slowly emerging in various states of hysterics from the beds behind which they had taken cover.

"_Never_ borrow a charm from anybody who can turn their hair bubble-gum-pink at will," Adelaide remarked, hopping back onto her bed to peer into the jumbled mess in her trunk. "It was _bound_ to be scatty. Mother will kill me – yikes!" She dived forwards and seized a small, flat item.

"Ooooooo – what is it? What is it?"

There was a small scrum of grabbing hands plunged into the trunk, as Adelaide batted them off frantically. "It's mine – it's mine – it's private – get off, Moira! It's – mine!" She rolled over clutching the whatever-it-was: "No – no – it's mine! Get off – no – no – it's mine – Ooofff!"

The last remark was in response to a pillow brought down on her head.

Adelaide sat up, the item firmly under her. "It's private," she repeated with an excellent imitation of Professor McGonagall's sternest tone, "so you're not having it, Cecilia Derwent-Carter, even if your umpteenth great granny was a Hogwarts Headmistress."

Louise Duerr, commonly known as 'Mouse,' let out her usual apologetic giggle at having been swept up into anything remotely vigorous, and retreated shyly out of the door, but the other two girls continued their campaign.

"Could summon it!" Cecilia suggested, drawing her wand with a flourish.

The owner of 'it' rolled her eyes. "Summon _what,_ exactly?"

Moira Lynch dropped to her knees besides the bed and pretended to peer under Adelaide. "It's small … it's flat …" she shaded her eyes and squinted "... it's – it's... a.. a photograph!"

"No comment!"

"Ooooo..." Moira sat back on her heels with a wicked grin. "A photograph she's _sensitive _about... A _private_ photograph... that the rest of us mustn't see... it must be... must be... er- McGonagall? Professor Snape? Madam Hooch? Or..."

"Charlie Weasley!" Cecilia yelled, bringing the pillow down on Adelaide's head with a thwack.

" 'Op it!" A wand flashed, and Cecilia ducked as a Hopping Hex cracked off the wall above her.

"When you howl, you're hit!" she shouted, as Adelaide's wand hand rose again.

"Addie loves Charlie!" Moira joined in, and dived to the floor under another hex. "The Keeper and the Captain!"

"And the Very Silly Chaser!" Adelaide mocked back, seizing the pillow off Cecilia and hurling it.

"Hell hath no fury like a quidditch keeper – Ooof!" Cecilia took the pillow full-face, and came up spluttering. "Come on, Moira, she's got dangerously good aim!"

"Like Charlie!" Moira added, as they fled giggling from the dorm. A pillow transfigured into a chakking cock-pheasant flew after them.

"Humph!" Adelaide got off the bed and slammed the dormitory door with considerable force. Really – dorm mates! And this ridiculous gossip about Charlie Weasley – surely the Keeper and the Captain should be entitled to sit up talking tactics over the model Quidditch pitch until three in the morning without being slandered by the rest of their House! They had won the Slytherin match as a result of it – the Cup loss had just been that Slytherin had scored so many goals in their victories over Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw that Gryffindor would have had to lead by about a thousand points before catching the Snitch. But that was all. Moira and Cecilia were just being silly. They were never sensible about anything. But then – Adelaide looked down at the thing in her hand – _they_ had fathers.

Moira had guessed right – a photograph. Benjy Fenwick's photograph.

Adelaide swallowed hard – just like Aunt Emmeline. Benjy Fenwick smiled and winked. She took the photo over to the window.

"Hello, Daddy." He still waved. He still smiled. He hadn't changed – he wasn't old or grey or any of things other people's fathers were. Always thirty-something, just like that last morning he'd gone to work and never come back.

"It's been a while, Daddy," Adelaide remarked gently. "I must have bored you stiff, jabbering. Well, it's me. Same House, same dorm. Still Gryffindor keeper. We did win the Cup, you know. The year Charlie Weasley was made Captain. Didn't manage it again... but I'm leaving my slot to Oliver Wood. He's good, Daddy. Jolly good Keeper, even for a third-year. He'll win it. I won something else, Daddy..." Adelaide grinned.

"Transfiguration. You must have figured I liked it – living in that book. Well... I came top in the year. The NEWT results aren't out yet. But Daddy, I got 100% – on the entire year's course work. And that means the Transfiguration medal that they haven't dished out for years. Professor M. _almost _smiled."

Adelaide straightened the dog-eared corners of the photo. "I've got a job, too, with that. They had a two year apprenticeship at _Transfiguration Today_, as Sub-editor. McGonagall gave me the reference as 'an exceptional talent,' and it was mine if I passed with over 90%. So I'm going to be a Sub-editor. That's not as _daring _as being an Auror – Moira's going to be an Auror rather than follow her brother into quidditch – but it means I can look after Mother. She won't have to be a scrimping and pinching school secretary any more. And she won't have to miss me in term time. We're going to rent a house somewhere in London. I will look after her, Daddy, you know... You do know that, somewhere, don't you, Daddy?"

She traced a pattern on the stone windowsill: A and F. "Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice don't even know who their Neville is, Daddy... You didn't know about that, did you? Or James and Lily, and their Boy Who Lived? That they were betrayed."

"He was like his cousin, Daddy, after all. _The Noble and most Cursed House of Black..._ that's what Uncle Frank said, Daddy... before one of them caught him." Adelaide blinked a little. "You don't think about it, you see, Daddy. You have to say: 'It's over.' It's just – just that _he_ coined that phrase with a laugh, sitting in our living room that day. Do you remember, Daddy? And – I know he's a traitor and he deserves to rot in Azkaban for ever for what he did, but – I wish he hadn't. 'Cause I thought he was nice, when I was five."

"What do you know, aged five?" Adelaide gave a little, sceptical shrug. "Nice? And Harry Potter's growing up with muggles, somewhere – no parents at all. I'm very lucky. Having Mother. And the Order. They've been very good to us – I don't mean odiously, charitably Very Good: they've just been there. They never minded me adopting half of them as aunts and uncles. Apart from McGonagall, of course..."

Adelaide laughed. "I just wish- well, wishing's no good. Less use than Divination, and that's 'A very imprecise branch of magic,' even before you get Professor Trelawney involved. Sub-editing's precise. It's a good job. But I _do_ wish –" She sighed. "I don't want to fight a war. But I wish I could do something as much helping to make the world right as you and all the Order did, Daddy..."

**~:~:~**

_**A/N: **Sniff** ? Yes, I know... but even the jolliest of Gryffindors is sad sometimes! **_

_**Believe it or not, we Are getting closer to the main plot of this fic – I'm writing, I'm writing... bear with me!**_


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